Leaks sent radioactivity into ocean at Fukushima, cleanup to take years (updated)

Contaminated cooling water is now spilling into the ocean in Fukushima, taking …

Workers in Japan are still struggling to limit environmental contamination at the Fukushima plant. The latest problem has been a break that is allowing heavily contaminated water flow directly into the ocean, a leak that has continued despite two attempts to plug it. Meanwhile, worries persist about the state of the reactor cores on the site.

Update: TEPCO, which runs the reactors, has announced the leak has been stopped. The New York Times has also obtained an assessment of the Fukushima reactors performed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that highlights some of the challenges facing the cleanup effort.

We'll start with the ocean. As we said in our previous coverage, all indications are that the cooling system for at least some of the reactors is no longer a closed loop. In order to keep the reactors cool, workers at the site are pumping prodigious amounts of water into the cooling system of some of the reactors, where it's either being vaporized into steam, or leaking back out; in either case, chances are good that it's coming in contact with the reactor core first, and will pick up radioactive isotopes then. (CNN indicates that reactor 2 has been receiving 200 tons of water a day.)

Currently, it seems that a lot of it is leaking out, creating highly radioactive pools of water on-site and having made its way into the ocean through a damaged area of concrete. The high levels of radioactivity mean that humans can't work directly on the crack, making what would otherwise be a routine repair about as difficult as fixing an oil well on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Workers have tried to patch the concrete twice and, initially, only managed to reduce the flow of water slightly; the flow has since come to a halt. The extended leakage has meant that, in the area around the damage, radiation levels have reached the point where exposure would be fatal in less than a day, and are millions of times the legal limit.

Fortunately, indications are that the contamination is largely a short-lived isotope of iodine that will decay to background within a matter of months. The sheer volume of the Pacific will also ensure that it will be diluted out to low levels relatively rapidly.

The ability of the Pacific to dilute any radioactivity is also providing a solution to one of the other problems we noted last time: a limited capacity to store contaminated water on site. The plan now is to dump some of the water that only has low levels of contamination. This will free up capacity that will be used to store some of the high-level waste that has been found in the reactor buildings.

While efforts continue to focus on keeping most of the contamination on-site, the question of how to clean up the site itself remains largely unanswered. It's not clear whether there is also significant contamination of groundwater being caused by the same (or other) leaks, or the extent to which a longer-lived cesium isotope, 137Cs, is being released at the same time.

Bigger questions remain about the state of the reactors themselves. As evidenced by a Nature News report, experts appear divided about the degree to which the reactor structure melted down, the shape that the fuel is in, and whether fission chain reactions may be restarting due to the damage. The problem is a general lack of information—nobody has seen the reactors, and people are trying to interpret indirect measures of what has gone on inside. Nevertheless, the consensus is that the cleanup on-site will take years; a manager at the utility has been quoted as saying, "I don’t know if we can ever enter the No. 3 reactor building again."

There has been no doubt for weeks that the Fukushima reactors would never be used again. Our ability to limit long-term contamination in the areas around the site, however, is still an open question. Once that crisis passes, however, Japan will face difficult decisions on how best to handle all the damaged nuclear fuel that, at the moment, remains poorly contained in a seismically active area.

In the news this morning they seemed to say the outside leak has been plugged.

@bombcar: one problem is the radiation, apparently; you don't want electronics to go bad and have a robot stuck somewhere. But mostly it's that the site is desperately hard to navigate. You don't have a lot of nice, smooth ramps and stuff; even at best of times you sometimes need to scale narrow stairwells or ladders to get around. And now doors are stuck and passageways and open areas are filled with mud and debris from the quake, from the tsunami, from the hydrogen explosions and from water bombing and high-pressure hoses. Even humans need to scramble and crawl over stuff just go get anywhere. There's still very few robots of any kind that could manage to get around in such an environment, never mind manage to perform any actual work.

Considering this information, while this disaster is not at the level of Chernobyl, it is still a huge economic hit to that area and a major disruption to those who used to live within a few miles of the plant. As for increased cancer/birth defect rates as a result of this, that remains to be seen.

@bb-15: it is a disaster for those living in the area. Just don't lose sight of the fact that the real disaster was the tsunami. The human and economic effects of the reactor are completely dwarfed by that event.

@bb-15: it is a disaster for those living in the area. Just don't lose sight of the fact that the real disaster was the tsunami. The human and economic effects of the reactor are completely dwarfed by that event.

Trying to sell any kind of reactor being built anywhere in the same state to the average man on the street is going to be pretty tough after this.. trying to explain how anything that includes the phrase 'molten salt' to people basically unaware you can even MELT salt, much less the temp required to do so, is 'better' and makes it safer is an even greater stretch.

And we still aren't using molten salt thorium reactors why? This whole thing could have been averted if we would just abandon the antiquated solid fuel uranium reactors.

As much as I support nuclear power and think the media's seriously sensationalized their reporting on Fukushima, I don't think that'd have helped much. All indications now are that the containment vessel was breached on at least one of the reactors (#2), if not all 3. That was probably due to the earthquake more than anything else, but the explosions probably didn't help the state of the vessel any. If there'd been a bunch of molten salt to leak out it might have been just as bad, or worse.

But we definitely need to move away from the old reactors, newer designs are much safer and could have helped at least somewhat in this situation. This was a rather major disaster (actually 2 of them in quick succession), so it's kind of hard to plan for, and protect against, something of this magnitude. Hell, the tsunami alone was larger than Japan had really planned for country-wide, much less at Fukushima. Some disasters are so rare that you simply can't plan for them.

I just don't see how nuclear energy can every be safe. You still have this insane by product, and what do you do with it?

No nukes.

-Pie

virtually all energy production comes with by products. Yeah the stuff from nuke plants is nasty, but it's in relatively small quantities. That actually makes it easier to deal with than things like

dams that kill fish runsfossel fuels that release co2coal that causes acid rain etc ("clean coal" is only a marketing slogan, it's yet to be close to real)even the industrial waste of plants that make solar cells

Just like there's no free lunch, there's pretty much no free energy, nor energy without some nasty side effect somewhere in the chain to produce it.

Tempus, what about solar energy? Solar energy is a free lunch, free energy, free of nasty side effects. If billions of dollars were poured into solar energy research instead of coal, oil, nuclear, I'm sure we'd have some affordable and efficient solar panels. Japan would have been in this kind of mess.

I just don't see how nuclear energy can every be safe. You still have this insane by product, and what do you do with it?

No nukes.

-Pie

Right then, will you volunteer to shut off all your gadgets? How about living next to yet another coal plant hmmmm?

Perhaps it would shock you to know that living close to a coal plant carries a higher yearly dose (3 times!) then living next to a nuclear (new-clear fyi) plant.

I think people would rather live close to a solar panel... like rooftop close.

What I am saying is that the vast majority of people who don't want to own or would not be capable of caring for solar panels; should if properly informed of all the facts, be PERFECTLY FINE with Nuclear energy.

@ARSThe day-to-day successes and setbacks will stop being news soon. They get the adrenaline going for a sec, that's all.

I'd appreciate more articles on the long term strategy to stabilize the site, and ultimately defuel the damaged units. Getting that accomished will be an engineering marvel, but will take a LONG time. (TMI-2 took many years, and did win presidential awards for the engineering involved).

I look to ARS to do the background research that the mainstreamMedia can't be bothered with, and provide better reporting of the plans (and progress) of the long road to come in stabilizing these units.

EDIT:corrected typo. Meant "defuel", not "refuel". (darned iPhone spell checker!). Normally, defueling would require re-establishing a secondary containment, which at this point is in tatters, or some other extraordinary means that does not currently exist.

Tempus, what about solar energy? Solar energy is a free lunch, free energy, free of nasty side effects. If billions of dollars were poured into solar energy research instead of coal, oil, nuclear, I'm sure we'd have some affordable and efficient solar panels. Japan would have been in this kind of mess.

The nice response: If it was that easy, we'd already be there.

Solar power is a wonderful, wonderful thing. It should be a major part of our future, since there appear to be very few byproducts.

However, it's expensive. It requires, like wind power, a fair amount of petroleum products and money to produce, move, install and maintain.

I agree that we should pour money and resources into mitigating all those factors, but in no way do I see evidence that your simplistic response given here does any justice to the facts of the matter.

The not-so-nice response:You're a flipping scientist, act like one.

Your simplistic, idealistic and emotionally-driven response above is exactly the kind of crap we do NOT need at this crux in human history in the rational discussion about future energy production.

If every single rooftop in the USA had 25% efficient (which is not reality for most people yet) solar panels, although we'd be using less non-renewable energy, we'd still be woefully short on electricity. And it would still cost trillions of dollars.

Seriously... two things have me riled now... 1. Uranium reactors and LFTR reactors are two completely different beasts. It was decided early on that Thorium reactors were preferable with many advantages however the ONE advantage Uranium reactors had over Thorium was their Plutonium breeding ability and every military arm pushed their governments in that direction over Thorium. Global production and processing of Uranium ten became unstoppable and Thorium fell by the wayside. The global war machine forced us to take the wrong branch in the road 70 years ago and it has never been revisited. The Chinese have announced for the first time that I ever recall of building a Liquid Flouride Thorium (LFTR) reactor.. Great! But it seems no one else has the will or budget to do the same. Very, very sad.2. Ars' douchebag registration system... that requires UPPPER case...AND LOWER case AND a NUMBER for a "commenting system" password? @%$!#!! .. Seriously, in this day where we all have countless logins and passwords to remember... some secure, some not so secure and many somewhere in between , this is very annoying. There is a time and place for higher security and this sure ain't it. I really get tired of random self-important douchebag programmers deciding these things for us..... Most programmers need to be told what to do... without management they implement asshat systems like this. While we're at it why don't we raise the national security level from yellow to red...what the Hell...

What about the two that died of radiation poisoning at this place? Or is that not DIRECTLY linked to nuclear power enough?

Let me guess, for wind power deaths you will count techs that have fallen from repairing them? I guess you could say we have telephone related deaths from techs who fall off telephone poles then. Or are you counting bird deaths?

Anyway, let's get back to your original quote, as it will be easier to disprove. What about the Mihama Nuclear Power Plant in 2004? You don't count those four?

edit- Noticed that someone else grabbed another nuclear power death, and we didn't even overlap.

2. Ars' douchebag registration system... that requires UPPPER case...AND LOWER case AND a NUMBER for a "commenting system" password? @%$!#!! .. Seriously, in this day where we all have countless logins and passwords to remember... some secure, some not so secure and many somewhere in between , this is very annoying. There is a time and place for higher security and this sure ain't it. I really get tired of random self-important douchebag programmers deciding these things for us..... Most programmers need to be told what to do... without management they implement asshat systems like this. While we're at it why don't we raise the national security level from yellow to red...what the Hell...

*not sure if serious*

If it weren't for the self-important douchebag programmers deciding these things, the majority of users (though considering the audience at Ars, probably fewer than average) would be setting passwords of 123456 on their luggage.

"The ability of the Pacific to dilute any radioactivity... . The plan now is to dump some of the water that only has low levels of contamination. This will free up capacity that will be used to store some of the high-level waste that has been found in the reactor buildings."

I don't think dumping contaminated water into the ocean, sourced directly from the ocean, that was used for dumping on several critically 'disshelved' reactors, was ever 'a plan'. Usually there's Plan A, contingencies B, C. This 'plan' was, if at all, Plan ZZZ954 known as "get a ticket and the fuk out". In other words, they're doing what any 12 year kid might think is a good idea. It amazes me at the lack of sophistication. I'm not blaming just expressing the unfortunate state of this.

I'd hate for this to become a precedent. 'Oh look, we have nuclear waste, what do we do. - Just throw it overboard Bob, it worked for the Japs."

To cpragman about long term strategies. Mate, they don't have tomorrow's strategy worked out, let alone what to do next month, or next year. There's nothing to report there yet, except speculations. It's all still crisis management; continuing desperate efforts to avert massive immediate melt-down. The 'event' hasn't stopped yet.

I read somewhere that Fukushima has a total of over 4000 tons of nuclear material, in use (sic) and 'spent'. Chernobyl had some 150 tons.

zaf's prediction: They replace the water with concrete, and bury the thing.

What about the two that died of radiation poisoning at this place? Or is that not DIRECTLY linked to nuclear power enough?

Let me guess, for wind power deaths you will count techs that have fallen from repairing them? I guess you could say we have telephone related deaths from techs who fall off telephone poles then. Or are you counting bird deaths?

Anyway, let's get back to your original quote, as it will be easier to disprove. What about the Mihama Nuclear Power Plant in 2004? You don't count those four?

edit- Noticed that someone else grabbed another nuclear power death, and we didn't even overlap.

unless "radiation poisoning" is some new term for tsunami, no such deaths have occurred at Fukushima so far AFAIK.

Misinformed. The U.S. has 2.1 trillion barrels of oil in its oil shales. This is enough to fuel the United States for the next 500 years, assuming you turn off each and every nuclear and coal plant, dam, windmill, and solar collector today.

500 years is about the same time length of time as since Da Vinci was dreaming up helicopters. For the purposes of you, this is "forever."

Tempus, what about solar energy? Solar energy is a free lunch, free energy, free of nasty side effects. If billions of dollars were poured into solar energy research instead of coal, oil, nuclear, I'm sure we'd have some affordable and efficient solar panels. Japan would have been in this kind of mess.

Look at all the pollution the creation of these solar panels generates in china. Pure silicon just doesn't lie around. No free lunch. Solar is a piece of the puzzle, not the silver bullet. Same for nuclear, unless you got some cold fusion going on in a mason jar.

Misinformed. The U.S. has 2.1 trillion barrels of oil in its oil shales. This is enough to fuel the United States for the next 500 years, assuming you turn off each and every nuclear and coal plant, dam, windmill, and solar collector today.

500 years is about the same time length of time as since Da Vinci was dreaming up helicopters. For the purposes of you, this is "forever."

The key is how much of that can be economically exploited. That will increase over time with technology, but not fast enough. Also, the more you have to remove rock or earth, the greater the environmental destruction. Just look at the Canadian oil sands. They aren't scraping up black sand off a desert. They are digging up lush forests rich in flora and fauna. Just look at one of there mines, you'll start looking for dante in one of the levels of hell.

-- They may have stopped the leak, but they still have way more water than they have storage space. They're currently actively pumping about 10,000 tons (about 2.4 million gallons) of "low" radioactive water from the Central Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility into the ocean, to make storage room for the highly radioactive water in the #2 reactor turbine building (which is submerging the critical electrical systems that need to come online).

-- Units #5 and #6 are now overflowing radioactive water into their respective drainage "pits", and some of this water has begun to flow into connected buildings. 1,500 tons (360,000 gallons) of this water is actively being pumped into the sea as well.

-- They suspect runoff from the #4 unit was somehow flowing into the #3 buildings.

-- Radiation is so high in some spots that it cannot even be measured by the mobile radiation monitoring equipment.

Why do people feel the need to lie like that. The quoted accident is a fuel recycling accident, not a nuclear power accident.

From the Wikipedia article linked to above:"The accident occurred as three workers were preparing a small batch of fuel for the Jōyō experimental fast breeder reactor."

Your view of what constitutes a "nuclear power accident" is rather narrow. You are also choosing to ignore the 4-9,000 cancer fatalities that even the Chernobyl Forum expects to eventually have resulted from that accident. I'm not going to get into the much higher estimates from less mainstream sources. When it comes to coal you want to count mining accidents. In short you are spinning the facts to suit your agenda. It is very difficult to have a sensible discussion when people start to do that.

Incidentally, I don't think anyone is suggesting Japan replace its nuclear generators with coal powered plants. Natural gas and alternative sources like wind, solar, biomass and geothermal are the main suggestions. Care to link to any evidence about the numbers killed by wind or solar power?

I just don't see how nuclear energy can every be safe. You still have this insane by product, and what do you do with it?

With a modern reactor like the LFTR, the waste is insanely small, and managing it is a non-issue. Dry cask storage for spent fuel from conventional reactors is also manageable for now, so long as we do correct course at some point. What is not manageable, is the massive pollution from coal and oil, to say nothing of the inevitable catastrophe, should we fail to reduce CO2 output.

Before you voice your concerns about nuclear, you should acquaint yourself the realities of burning coal, which are devastating to human health and the environment. Aside from the noxious gasses, particulate matter, and heavy metals, that pollution also contains, wait for it, small amounts of radioactive elements including Uranium. Small amounts add up though, with the vast quantities being burned.

There has been no doubt for weeks that the Fukushima reactors would never be used again.

To be fair, if the disaster hadn't happened then by now several of those reactors would be in the process of being decomissioned anyway. They were right at the end of their lifespan.

The molten-salt reactor tech isn't the silver bullet it gets made out to be online. If it really was cleaner, cheaper, safer and more efficient and possible with technology from fifty years ago then we would have been seeing them already.

These reactors use flouride as coolant. When in contact with moisture (i.e. air, in the event of a containment failure in a disaster situation or during maintenance/decomissioning), that will produce hydroflouric acid. It is highly corrosive and extremely toxic, and produces fumes which can destroy the lungs and eyes. This also makes designs that use the heat to produce steam to power turbines potentially extremely dangerous. The design is difficult to regulate, because the temperatures of the molten salts are high enough to deform usual control rod materials eg graphite. It's more difficult to build containment vessels and they need to be machined to a much higher precision. The flouride salts, when cool, will decompose to fluorine gas, which is corrosive and extremely reactive. Thorium reactors require a neutron source to actually begin the breeder reaction in the first place as well - usually this is a significant quantity of Uranium. They don't breed Uranium very quickly (only breeding ~9% of the fuel they burn) which is one reason they're less useful for weaponisation, but it means that bringing new Thorium reactors online takes much longer the more you have of them proportionally. Additionally raw, unenriched Thorium will have Thorium-230 isotopes, which breeds to U-232, which in turn will eventually decay to thallium-208 which is an extremely active gamma emitter. This makes it impractical for weapons use, but also requires consideration in the reactor plant as well - gamma rays and electronics don't mix, and gamma rays and people also don't get on well.

Additionally, thorium reactors can be used to produce fissionable material for nuclear weapons. It involves enriching the fuel and constantly separating out unwanted isotopes and is less practical than simple enriched uranium, but to say that it's not possible at all is wrong. The real reason is that vendors of nuclear reactors don't want to make them - they derive their long-term profits by selling enriched uranium to the customers of their reactors and have invested billions into those fuel production chains. Thorium reactors require no enrichment and very little processing. There's no money in it for them.

As I scrolled down reading responses, they just got more and more lol-worthy. Here I find an interesting stat, but completely inferred. And somehow my questioning nuclear energy makes me a moron.

Did the Canadians take into account the total wasteland around Chernobyl, or the yearly cost to maintain that single failed nuclear plant? How about all the deaths due to cancer from the fallout?

The dangers of a single accident outweigh the benefit of nuclear energy. It's unsafe at so many levels, and leaves a poisonous byproduct that has the potential to inflict harm worldwide. It is, to put it simply, not worth the risk. Fukushima is a reminder of how great those risks are.

KonoWatakushi wrote:

Before you voice your concerns about nuclear, you should acquaint yourself the realities of burning coal, which are devastating to human health and the environment. Aside from the noxious gasses, particulate matter, and heavy metals, that pollution also contains, wait for it, small amounts of radioactive elements including Uranium. Small amounts add up though, with the vast quantities being burned.

See, this is a bogus argument. You are suggesting that because coal is deadly, we should pursue nuclear energy, even though it is also deadly. Indeed, very deadly and environmentally poisonous.

All these "either or" scenarios presented are bogus. It's not "coal or nuclear" and that's it. Only one person mentioned solar power, nobody discussed wind power, or hydroelectric power (yes, I know that's not an option for Japan). And in all honesty, yes, I would be willing to turn off my gadgets for a set period of time every day if that was the personal price I had to pay to eliminate nuclear power.

I would also support the pursuit of safe, "renewable" options like solar, wind and hydroelectric power. We should be eliminating our reliance on coal, but not at the expense choosing another poisonous and very deadly threat to human life.